The Cross Strait Times

Ninety-five years ago to this day events in the Yangtze River valley transpired into one of the greatest watersheds in the history of the Chinese civilization. On October 10, 1911, the New Army soldiers stationed in Wuchang launched an uprising that irreversibly set of the cascade of events ending nearly two millennia of imperial rule in China. The young men who launched the 1911 Revolution surely had lofty goals in mind—they had secretly gathered in the months before thinking of ways to make China strong and the Chinese people confident. To them, the best way to reinvigorate the Chinese nation was to do something dramatic, to throw off the imperial yoke and establish a liberal system of government that had thus far succeeded so well in the West.

The National Father Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who took on a pivotal role in the early Republic as its first provisional president and later as a devoted opponent of warlordism, summarized his vision of China under the Three Principles of the People. He dreamed of a China free from foreign domination, governed under a liberal constitutional democracy, and harmonized with a vital industrial economy and equitable land holdings.

Looking back, can we confidently say that the 1911 Revolution was a success? Does the China that exists today represent the legacy of the republican revolutionaries? Or must we mark 1911 as a year of failure, having been effectively quashed by the tumult of the 20th Century?

The hopes of Sun Yat-sen and the New Army mutineers lie today not in the Chinese heartland, but with the 23 million people of Taiwan. Only in Taiwan have we seen Chinese democracy in action, as it thrives under a free society governed by Dr. Sun’s Five-Power Constitution. The Taiwan of the past 20 years is clear demonstration of democracy’s potency and its ability to succeed in Chinese society. But the 1911 Revolution is not complete—now, greater than ever, it is under siege. The existence of the Republic of China—the very legacy of the revolutionaries—is now under threat.

The People’s Republic of China has strived to stamp the Republic of China out of existence to legitimize a civil war victory that brought about decades human disasters through miscalculated policies. The Taiwan independence forces have been determined to forge a separate Taiwanese state to replace the Republic of China, of what little is left of it, to cement their dream of separate nationhood. Those of us wishing to complete the 1911 Revolution and reunify China under the Three Principles of the People find ourselves increasingly marginalized by a bipolar battle between the Communist Party and Taiwan independence. We find our purpose being ridiculed and our beliefs being ignored. They tell us the Kuomintang is weak, the Communist Party is powerful, and give us two impalatable and extreme options: to embrace a single China ruled by Leninist authoritarianism or to resist communism by forcing a permanent separation of our nation. We accept neither!

Our purpose here is carry on with the 1911 Revolution—to promote the peaceful reunification of China under a constitutional liberal democracy. The ideals of 1911 must not be forgotten. China’s rise back to its great place in the world cannot be complete if it is not democratic, as democracy is an inevitable end in the advancement of progressive nation-states. It is democracy that will ensure the mechanisms of legitimizing the state, harmonizing the society, and regulating the government. Democracy is the ideal that will link the peoples of both side of the Taiwan Strait, separate so long by mutual animosity, into unifying to build a strong, accordant, and prosperous China.

Today is the anniversary of not only the birth of a new order, but the birth of a new ideal. Today, we inaugurate the newest front of a century-old democratic revolution.

On October 10, 1911 the Wuchang Uprising was launched. The first gunshot of the Xinhai Revolution, which overthrew the last imperial dynasty of China, was heard around the world. Behind the revolution were the ideas of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the man revered on both sides of the Taiwan Strait as the “father of modern China”.

Sun passed away without seeing his dreams realized. He envisioned a strong, united, and democratic China governed by the “Three Principles of the People.” Almost one hundred years later, Sun’s vision has yet to be fully made into a reality on the mainland, but they are still held in the hearts of the Taiwanese people, who have strived in making this dream come true.

I traveled to the city of Xiamen in Fujian province last year. Looking across the sea towards Kinmen, I could still see the giant characters lit up on the other side of the strait, “Reunify China under the Three Principles of the People” (三民主義統一中國). Behind me were equally impressively big characters that read “Reunify China under One Country, Two Systems” (一国两制統一中国). I realized that not only has Dr. Sun’s vision been put on hold, but our nation is still divided, after so many years. In a sense, history has been rewritten by successive Communist administrations. In mainland China, the existence of the Republic of China has been denied and the ideals that propelled the Xinhai Revolution forgotten. “Double Ten” is no longer celebrated as a national holiday and is only briefly mentioned in history texts. The “democratic liberating” movement of modern China has only one creditor: the ruling Communist Party founded in 1921. It is now hard to find any voices of dissent in mainland China–they have mostly left the country, denied reentry to their homeland.

But as people’s living standards rise on the mainland, it is inevitable that they will start to look across the Strait. They will begin to wonder whether, just maybe, what has been achieved in Taiwan can be shared with all of China. Through my extensive travels on the mainland, I have met and conversed with people from different ranks, backgrounds, and ethnicities. They all have one dream: to see a united, and prosperous China. They dare not mention the word “democracy”, for the Chinese Communist Party has a tight grip on society. But they have not forgotten Dr. Sun Yat-sen, and his visions for our nation.

China is at a crossroads. While the government on the Mainland tries to divert people away from democracy with its focus on economic development and wealth, activists in Taiwan attempt to convince the people to turn their back on the Mainland and change the Republic of China into a ‘Republic of Taiwan’. Alas, the people shall not be easily fooled. I believe in what Dr. Sun dreamed, that one day China shall be united under a democracy, stronger and more prosperous than ever. The process starts with our generation, with reforming the PRC government, and supporting the non-fractious parties in Taiwan.